Saturday, May 31, 2014

UK abortion doctors may consult via Skype

By Michael CookDoctors in the UK will be able to give an opinion on whether a woman can have an abortion by Skype or telephone, according to a clarification from the Department of Health.

The new “guidance” makes it clear that UK law does not require either of the two doctors who must approve an abortion to have a face-to-face interview with a woman. They must consider her case, but they are not required to have personal contact with her.
The Department says that it is “good practice”, however, to see the woman, or at least to Skype her or speak to her on the phone.

On the other hand, the
common practice of pre-signing or even photocopy certificates is clearly
against the law. Doctors must form an opinion “in good faith” on the woman’s case.
The guidance was issued after two doctors were caught agreeing to do sex-selective
abortions in a sting by the Telegraph. These are clearly illegal in the
UK, as abortions can only be carried out if the woman’s physical or mental health is at risk. The PublicProsecutor decided not to prosecute and said that “there is no guidance on how a
doctor should go about assessing the risk to physical or mental health,
no guidance on where the threshold of risk lies and no guidance on a
proper process for recording the assessment carried out”.

Is a Skype conversation sufficient to assess whether a woman’s mental or physical health is at risk? There is surprisingly little research on this topic. One Australian study found that most family doctors
were not keen on using Skype for consultations because of “technical
limitations, patient confidentiality concerns, [and] regulatory issues”.
It is still too early to tell whether video-consultations could harm
patients or increase the risk of litigation. Another study found that
most doctors did not want to use video for serious conditions.

Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics,
was scathing about the new guidance: “A telephone consultation to
ensure authorisation – presumably with a pro-choice doctor – completely
ignores the life-taking nature of abortion, makes a complete mockery of
the original Act and would surely not be tolerated in any other branch
of medicine.”
Editor’s note. This appeared at bioedge.org

Self-Starvation as the New “Death with Dignity”

By Wesley SmithSelf-starvation has become the latest craze among the “death with dignity” crowd. This has been coming on for some time. Removing feeding tubes from cognitively disabled people
who can’t swallow has been allowed for decades, under the right to
refuse unwanted “medical treatment.” But what about people who can eat
and drink by mouth? Assisted suicide advocates argue that it isn’t fair that they can’t die too.

So, activists promote a form of “self-deliverance” that they call “voluntary stopping eating and drinking,”
(VSED), by which suicidal people declare their wish to starve to death.
As a matter of respecting autonomy, doctors won’t force feed these
suicidal people. Some even agree to facilitate the death by helping
palliate the potential agony that can be associated with starving and
dehydrating.
Some bioethicists even argue that

nursing

homes and hospitals should be legally required to starve patients who can eat and drink, if they have serious dementia and have ordered their starvation deaths
in an advance medical directive. In Canada, a lawsuit has already been
filed, and I consider it the most important—and dangerous—litigation in
bioethics today.

The case involves Margo
Bentley, a woman from British Columbia. A believer in assisted suicide,
Bentley signed an advance directive instructing that she be refused
life-sustaining medical treatment and even be euthanized if she had
Alzheimer’s and could no longer recognize her children. Bentley is now
in that condition, but she doesn’t require life support—so
there is no treatment to withdraw—and willingly accepts food and water
by mouth, meaning that the conditions of her directive aren’t met. And
as for euthanasia, it’s illegal in Canada. Thus, there is no immediately
available legal way to make her dead even though that is what she
clearly wanted.
Her family sees this as a profound injustice. They sued the nursing home
seeking a court order requiring the facility to intentionally starve
Bentley. The trial judge refused, but the case is currently on appeal.

Adding to the momentum for self-ordered starvation, the Hastings Center
Report—perhaps the world’s most prestigious bioethics journal—just
published a major article arguing that people with advanced dementia who
can still eat normally be starved to death, if they signed an advance
medical directive expressing that desire.
Bioethicist Paul T. Menzel and physician
M. Colette Chandler-Cramer create a sophistic argument to justify their
conclusion: People have the right to commit VSED; people also have the
right to refuse life-sustaining treatment
in an advance medical directive; hence, people have the right to order
themselves starved to death (commit VSED via advance medical directive).
The authors justify their proposal with a utilitarian rationalization:

Our argument for withholding food and
water by mouth focuses not on food assistance per se, but on discerning
two key points: when the dementia meets the triggering conditions
described in the person’s directive and when the person’s continued
stake in survival is sufficiently low that her current interests align with her earlier directive.

Think carefully about this: Advanced directives
control decisions about medical treatments. But spoon-feeding is
considered “humane care”—not the same thing at all. Thus, under Menzel
and Chandler-Cramer’s theory, a patient should also be empowered to
order the non-medical withholding of other forms of humane care to
hasten their deaths. For example, why not permit a directive to order
that blankets be removed during a cold snap to increase the chances of
contracting pneumonia? Less certain, to be sure: But basically the same
idea.

Demonstrating how far this agenda may have already penetrated the medical system,
California’s Physician’s Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST)
form contains some worrying language that could potentially be construed
as authorizing the removal of food and water from patients capable of
eating. Once signed by patient/surrogate and doctor, it becomes a
permanent part of a patient’s medical chart.

Section C of the form, “ARTIFICIALLY ADMINISTERED NUTRITION,”
instructs whether, and for how long, to use a feeding tube. But it also
states (my emphasis): “Offer food [to the patient] by mouth if feasible
and desired.”

Feasible, I get: When a person is dying they may naturally stop
eating as the body shuts down. In such cases, eating can cause harm. But
if desired? Is this terminology setting the stage for advance medical
directives to order the withholding of spoon-feeding even though that
isn’t “life-sustaining treatment”? I’m not sure. But, at the very least,
further clarity is required.

If the law ever allows people to pre-order their own starvation, we will have crossed a deadly Rubicon: The supposed bright line dividing the right to refuse medical treatment from a purported right to euthanasia will be obliterated. Doctors and nurses
may be legally required to become killers in a way that in other
contexts would be considered torture and an egregious abuse of human
rights. Finally, once we can starve patients, even though they willingly
eat, the obvious question arises: “Why not just give them lethal
injections?”
Actually, I believe that has been the goal all along. The starvation
agenda is merely the horrid means intended to lead us to that horrible
end.Editor’s note. Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism. He also consults for the Patients Rights Council and the Center for Bioethics and Culture. This appeared at “First Things” Source: NRLC News

China should stop forced abortion and gendercide for Children’s Day June 1

By Womens Rights without FrontiersOn June 1, all provinces in China will celebrate “Children’s Day” with lavish children’s art
exhibitions and performances. Meanwhile, no mention will be made of the
fact that China has “prevented” more than 400 million children from
being born, often by forced abortion, through its brutal One Child Policy. In addition, millions of Chinese baby girls are being aborted, just because they are girls.
Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, stated,

“The people of China cherish their children, but the government of China is crushing them. If the Chinese government truly cared about children, it would stop forcibly aborting them. If they truly cared about girls, they would take strong measures to stop the selective abortion
of females. It is hypocrisy for the Chinese government to sponsor a
lavish media event such as Children’s Day, meanwhile destroying children
behind the scenes.”

Women’s
Rights Without Frontiers has launched a “Save a Girl” campaign to save
women from forced abortion and baby girls from gendercide, and to extend
a helping hand to families who are so poor that their daughters are at
risk. Our network of fieldworkers on the ground in China visits women
who are thinking of aborting or abandoning their baby girls. We offer
them monthly stipends for a year to help them keep their daughters. The

program

has met with great success — women are choosing to keep their baby daughters, with our encouragement and help.

One recent example involves the mother of babies
Bao-yo and Hui-ying (names have been changed to protect their
identities). When their mother learned she was pregnant, she was
thrilled. Soon, however, her in-laws began pressuring her to have a boy,
so she went to a local hospital
to have an ultrasound performed to determine the sex of the child. If
it were a boy, she would have the baby. If it were a girl, she would
abort.

What would have been double her happiness turned to double despair:
she was pregnant with not one, but two girls. When her husband’s family found out the news, they were furious with their daughter-in-law. She didn’t know what to do.

But one of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers’ undercover fieldworkers
found this frightened woman and told her about our “Save a Girl” campaign. The pregnant mother
and her husband could not believe an American organization would care
about their daughters. Our fieldworker showed them pictures and told
them stories of other families we have helped, other families who chose
to join with us in believing that girls matter just as much as boys. The
couple was convinced and overjoyed. Through the aid of one year of WRWF
monthly stipends, they chose to keep their baby girls and soon precious
twins were born.

Now, the mother-in-law who had been so furious has changed her
attitude. She enjoys the two new angels in her life and appreciates our
help. We are saving lives and changing the culture one family at a time!
Learn more about our “Save a Girl” Campaign

Semika Shaw: the other woman who died at Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic

By Dave AndruskoEditor’s note. This first ran in April 2013. I re-run it today
because Planned Parenthood’s political arm was unable to defeat a pro-choice
Pennsylvania state Rep. who refused to look the other way: Rep. Margo
Davidson, a Democrat, voted in favor of a law to require abortion clinics to meet the same safety standards as ambulatory surgical facilities.
As the story below explains, she had a particularly powerful motive to
vote on behalf of woman and against the advice of Planned Parenthood:
Semika Shaw was her cousin.

Pennsylvania State Rep. Margo Davidson

A powerful confluence of stories, speeches, and videos today helped remind me why the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell is so very, very important.
A number of pro-life Members of the U.S. House of Representatives
took to the floor today to lament the tragedies that took place at
Gosnell’s “House of Horrors” and to criticize the media for the
near-total absence of coverage of a case where both sides have now
rested.
The speeches, though brief, were powerful. There are a lot of people
who watch the House on C-SPAN and my guess is that many/most of them
heard about Gosnell’s murder trial for the first time. As one Member put
it, she rose to “raise awareness about the atrocities.”

Most of the sparse media coverage dealt with the murders of seven
unborn babies who were aborted alive and then allegedly killed when
their spinal cords were split.
(The judge threw out three of the first-degree charges, but four remain
for the jury of 7 women and 5 men to ponder.)
But there is also 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar who died, according to

prosecutors

,
when Gosnell’s unqualified staff gave her an overdose of Demerol and
other pain killers in 2009. Gosnell is charged with third degree murder
in her death. [Editor’s note. Gosnell was eventually found guilty of
three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of three babies and
one count of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Mrs. Mongar.]
If you hadn’t read the Grand Jury report (and kept up with the coverag
e in NRL News
Today), you wouldn’t know that the Grand Jury that excoriated Gosnell
and the Health Bureaucracy in Pennsylvania wrote extensively about
another woman who died at Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society.

The Philadelphia Grand Jury that investigated abortionist Kermit
Gosnell wanted to know why “Pennsylvania Department of State attorneys
failed to investigate a 22-year-old patient’s death caused by Gosnell’s
recklessness.” That 22-year-old was Semika Shaw.

Yesterday and today we ran excerpts from the Grand Jury’s report that deal with the death of 22-year-old Semika Shaw. “On October 9, 2002, the Professional Underwriters Liability Insurance Company
reported to the State Board of Medicine that it had paid a $400,000
settlement to the family of Semika Shaw, the 22-year-old mother of two
who died following an abortion procedure at Gosnell’s clinic in March
2000.” More specifically, she “died from infection and sepsis two days
after Gosnell perforated her uterus and cervix during an abortion
procedure,” according to the report. “
If you read today’s and yesterday’s excerpts, it’s obvious that those
who should have investigated her death hardly took a glance. The
headline of a section in the report reprinted ties Ms. Shaw’s death
together with what the Grand Jury called Gosnell’s “crime spree that he
called a medical practice”:
“Before Department of State prosecutors decided not to investigate the
22-year-old patient’s death, they had been told of Gosnell’s many
illegal practices.”

As I was looking for something else today, I saw for the first time
the statement Pennsylvania State Rep. Margo Davidson made. She was the
only African-American to vote in favor of HB 574, a long-overdue bill to require that abortion clinics meet the same safety standards as ambulatory surgical facilities.

She explained she was supporting HB 574 on behalf of her cousin, Semika Shaw, “who was killed at the Gosnell clinic.” She learned of her death when Davidson was asked to eulogize Ms. Shaw.
After her voted in favor, voice
breaking, Davidson began by saying, “I believe that I am the only
member of this house that was directly touched by the tragedy at the
Gosnell clinic.” She ended her brief remarks this way:

“Today I honor her memory by voting yes on this legislation, that seeks to safeguard the health of women, that is long overdue, so that never again will a woman walk into a licensed health care facility
in the State of Pennsylvania and be butchered as she was–with her
uterus perforated and her death of sepsis and infection, permeating in
her body, till she writhed in pain on the floor of her home, to her
ultimate death.

“Today I thank the members of this House that supported this legislation for the safety of women.”

As I listened to Rep. Davidson, I thought back to the comments made earlier this week by Gosnell’s attorney.
Jack McMahon said Gosnell could not be convicted of third degree murder
in the death of Mrs. Mongar because that requires malice, or “conscious
disregard” for her particular life.
McMahon said, “She wasn’t treated any differently than any of the other thousands of other people who went through there.”
Truer words were never spoken.

PP’s Political Arm unsuccessfully attacks one of its own for daring to vote for abortion clinic regulations

One race in Pennsylvania shows just how radically out-of-kilter the pro-abortion political machine is—even in a state that seems to bleed blue during Presidential election years.
State Representative Margo Davidson would seem to fit the profile of the ideal Planned Parenthood candidate. Energetic, attractive, African-American Northeasterner, who steadfastly supports Roe v. Wade.
And yet, Planned Parenthood’s political arm did not rise in support—in fact, the PAC waged an all-out assault against her, endorsing instead a pro-abortion man running to replace her (and decrease the female count in the state legislature in the process).
While bemoaning a so-called War on Women, abortion advocates staged a rhetorical war on this woman.

Why?
Because she dared to vote for a bill that would ensure that abortion centers that had not been inspected in 15 years finally would be forced to put out the welcome mat to unannounced health inspectors.
This was not a casual vote for Rep. Davidson, who represents a
heavily Democratic area just outside Philadelphia. She lost her cousin
to abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s rampage—one of the adult women killed in the place

prosecutors

described as a House of Horrors.

Semika Shaw, only 22 years old and a mother of three, died after her uterus was perforated under Gosnell’s “abortion care.”
In the searing documentary 3801 Lancaster,
which chronicles Gosnell’s terrorizing escapades, Rep. Davidson notes
she was the only member of the Pennsylvania House directly touched by
the Gosnell tragedy. Davidson recalled thinking with regard to Semika,
“What do you mean she’s gone?”
To Planned Parenthood’s way of thinking, Rep. Davidson also committed the unforgiveable sin of voting against taxpayer
funding of abortion—even though she was joined by 143 of her House
colleagues and had the support of the vast majority of the public in
voting for House Bill 818.
But a funny thing happened
on the way to the voting booth. A sizeable number of Democrats in the
164th district stood behind Rep. Davidson and ignored the protestations
of Planned Parenthood’s PAC. Davidson beat Planned Parenthood’s man by
eleven percentage points in the recent spring primary.

Again, Rep. Davidson does not self-identify as pro-life and made it clear she did not want the endorsement of a pro-life organization. She simply cast votes on behalf of her constituents and in memory of her cousin.

The furor with which Planned Parenthood fought her exposes the
radical nature of the abortion industry and its promoters. And they
proved themselves quite anti-woman in this particular case.
But Planned Parenthood ultimately lost, and that says a great deal
about the wisdom of Pennsylvania voters. Planned Parenthood’s
“values”—abortion on demand, for any reason, at any cost–are not theirs.Editor’s note. See also Semika Shaw: the other woman who died at Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic.Source: NRLC News

Yes this is really a thing, VIP abortion services featured in New York

By Jeannie DeangelisEastside
Gynecology is located in a neighborhood in New York City where very
important people live in close proximity. That’s why it seems fitting
that the high-end abortion clinic would appeal to nearby potential
clientele by offering VIP Abortion Services.

For women with discriminating tastes, Eastside Gynecology offers
“exclusive and VIP surgical services” for early and late-term abortions,
surgical abortions, and manual vacuum aspirations (MVA) “for any
patient who requires the utmost in service, comfort, and
confidentiality.”
According to the Eastside Gynecology website:

“Our VIP rooms are designed to make
you feel at home, with a luxurious mahogany bed, oil paintings, Internet
and TV for complete privacy and comfort. Patient escorts are allowed to
stay with the patient throughout the duration of their visit at our
private clinic.”

Because after all, for a mother with means, when disposing of her
unborn child, “service, comfort and confidentiality” are a must.
Moreover, for an East Side killing factory to have anything less than
“luxurious mahogany bed[s], oil paintings,” and Internet service would
not do justice to the address.

Sumptuous surroundings are not the whole picture; it gets better. If
you are a woman looking to rid yourself of the inconvenience of an
unwanted pregnancy and can shell out the big bucks, Eastside Gynecology
says it’s willing to close down the clinic and dedicate the entire
facility “Just for You.”
Think of it! Who’s more deserving of tender loving care than a woman exercising power over life and death?
That’s why, prior to and immediately after condemning a child growing
in the womb to a red biohazard bag, Eastside Gynecology offers VIP
Surgical Patients the option to have the “entire facility and staff
dedicated solely to their needs and care.”

If money is no object, why not have the abortion providers “close the
facility to any other patient on that particular day,” so that “No
other patient will be scheduled or seen during your entire visit?” Who
would argue that a Manhattan girl with dough deserves to have things
“completely private,” not to mention an “entire staff … dedicated solely
to [her] needs and [her] care alone?”
The Eastside Gynecology clinic accommodates the “needs of public
figures, celebrities, and high-profile individuals… [who can]… schedule a
VIP abortion appointment and Confidential Concierge Services.” That’s
good to know for wealthy stars such as comedian Sarah Silverman, who
“doesn’t like to admit” that she’s never had the opportunity to fulfill
her dream of ridding herself of what she refers to as “goo.”

For out-of-towners like Ms. Silverman, who lives in Los Angeles but
would likely refuse to dispose of her unborn child in a clinic that
doesn’t have “Private Abortion Boutique Services” such as sleigh beds,
flat-screen television sets, plush robes, and free Wi-Fi, Eastside
Gynecology will gladly arrange “flights, car service, hotels or personal
care.”

It’s good to know that for “Sex and the City” types who live on the
East Side and are looking for an abortion clinic that fits their
luxurious lifestyle, Eastside Gynecology is a great place to have an
abortion – at least until another Manhattan clinic comes along whose VIP
Abortion Services include a gourmet lunch, a post-abortion mani/pedi,
and a relaxing hot stone massage.Editor’s note. This appeared at liveactionnews.org.

Pelosi, Reid, Obama would put everyone in VA-like plans

The
deadly rationing scandal at several Veterans Administration hospitals
has many politicians running for cover, suddenly suggesting we offer
veterans more private-pay options to the single-payer plan of the
Veterans Health Care system.
But not Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama. They’d prefer the
entire nation be forced into a single-payer system where the government
replaces private insurance, a system that has inevitably led to
rationing where it’s been tried.

On Monday, Pelosi was interviewed by Time magazine’s Ezra Klein about changes or improvements she’d like to see to Obamacare.

Nancy Pelosi: “I have some of my own suggestions that I couldn’t get through in the first round . . .”

Ezra Klein: “How would you like to see it improved?”

Pelosi: “Of course I wanted it single payer and I wanted a public option.”

As if that would somehow make it better than the disaster we’ve
already seen in Obamacare? How tone-deaf could one be to suggest a
preference for a single-payer system now, when the nation’s clearest
example of a single-payer model is seeing veterans die by the dozens for
lack of care – in other words, by rationing?
But Pelosi isn’t the only supporter. Long before he ran for
president, when perhaps he thought his words wouldn’t matter to a wider
audience, Barack Obama made it clear the only thing holding us back from
a single-payer system is that the public wasn’t ready for it, yet.
“I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care
program.” Obama said in 2003. “A single-payer health care plan, a
universal health care plan. That’s what I’d like to see. But as all of
you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we’ve got to
take back the White House, we’ve got to take back the Senate, and we’ve
got to take back the House.”
So for Obama, it appears the only impediment, at least theoretically,
is that his party doesn’t have control of the U.S. House. Well,
elections do have consequences. Especially for those who might lose
their health care – or their lives – because of them.

For Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the prospect of going single
payer even seems to bring out a rarely seen sense of enthusiasm. In an
August 13, 2013 interview with PBS, Reid said “What we’ve done with
Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from
having something that’s going to work forever.”

When then asked by panelist Steve Sebelius whether he meant
ultimately the country would have to have a health care system that
abandoned insurance as the means of accessing it, Reid said: “Yes, yes.
Absolutely, yes.”

That’s the definition of single-payer. No insurance companies, the
government runs the health care system. Just like in the VA system.

And just like in that system, patients would die, needlessly and
without recourse, because the government would be the final arbiter of
whether you get treatment or not.
National Right to Life is working to repeal Obamacare, and is
supporting legislation introduced by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), S. 2191,
to remove all provisions in Obamacare that enable the government to
ration health care.
These actions, not expanding the deadly grasp of government to
include the potential rationing of every single American through a
single-payer system, could save an untold number of lives. I ask for
your support.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Men: Should they have a say in abortion?

Yesterday, Neil Lyndon of theDaily Telegraph wrote a column, discussing whether men should have a say in abortion.

In the
state assembly of Ohio…a bill has been tabled that would give fathers a
final say in abortion. Their written consent would have to be obtained
before an abortion could be effected. If a father refused consent, the abortion would not be allowed.

As far as I’ve found, this bill was tabled back in 2009. But, it’s a worthy discussion point. As Lyndon writes:

Any man who has tried to raise his voice has been denounced as an enemy of “a woman’s inalienable right to choose”.

This is a problem that plagues our society. As Danny Burton wrote forLive Action in “If you don’t have a uterus, zip it!” pro-life men are constantly – and rudely – told they have no say in abortion, including the abortions of their own children.
Decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a law requiring a father’s consent before his child could be aborted. In a case I was personally involved with,
a judge refused to stop an abortion that the husband and father
objected to, on the basis of the Court’s ruling. While men must do what
they can to protect their children (I discuss their options here), sometimes what they can do amounts to very little, thanks to contradictory laws.
Consider if it is truly just for the law to tell a man that, if his child is born,
he will be responsible for child support (and possibly more) to help
raise his child. This is the case even if he does not want his child.
However – if he does want his child, i.e., he’s being a good dad – he has absolutely no say, the law says, on keeping his child alive. Even if the dad were to volunteer to pay all medical expenses involved in the pregnancy and birth, even if he were to take on sole responsibility for raising his child, none of this technically matters.A photo used in “Lucy,” Skillet’s song for an aborted daughter
Our laws are structured to force a man to support his child only if the mother lets his child live. Not only does she have complete say over the innocent child’s life, she also has complete say over the man’s ability to be the dad of a living child.
[As a side note, please don't interpret this article as saying that
it's useless for a father to attempt to save his child's life or to try
to stop an abortion through legal means. A father should always try to save his child's life, even when he is not assured of success. Go here to see what a father can do.]
But back to Lyndon’s article. He writes:

When, in 1989, The Times of London
published a column of mine in which I mourned the absence of two
aborted children whom I might have fathered, the paper received so many
letters in response that they had to be run on full half-pages on
consecutive days. Nineteen out of 20 of those correspondents furiously
told me that, as a man, I had no right to express any opinion on
abortion and I could keep my feelings of loss to myself.
The woman’s right to choose is, obviously, not the only concern in a pregnancy – despite the fury with which feminists have been insisting on that position for 50 years.
On top of the highly contentious question of whether the foetus has philosophical, moral andlegal rights,
the inseminating man must clearly, undeniably have an active interest
that ought to be established and recognised with legal rights. And then,
too, the wider society that pays for the operation under a state health service should also have a say.
Is it in the interests of UK taxpayers, for example, that more than
150000 abortions are performed every year? Is it in the interests of the
wider society that those lives should be stilled?

While Lyndon writes for the UK, Americans ought to perk up our ears
as well. We fund our nation’s abortion giant – Planned Parenthood – to
the tune of millions of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars. Man and woman
alike, we ought to have a say in stopping abortion.
Laws should recognize a man’s right to stop the murder of
his own child. And our elected representatives should also recognize our
right as taxpayers to refuse to fund America’s abortion giant with one
more red cent.

New blog shows teens how to get an abortion without telling their parents

As if teenagers didn’t already feel misunderstood by their parents,
here comes a zine to help distance them from their parents. Hot off the
presses of ondinequinn.wordpress.com (the site has been removed since
this piecewas published, an archive of the site is here) comes “How to Get an Abortion without Telling Your Parents.” Perfect forhelping teens
to distrust their parents, isolate them from the people who love them
most, and knock their self-esteem even lower by convincing them that
their child is better off dead than being raised by a teen mother.

In “How to Get an Abortion without Telling Your Parents,” parents are, of course, made out to be the bad guys. And in some cases maybe they are. Not all parents were created equal. But in most circumstances, parents love their children, and since they have to give permission for Tylenol, they should be in the
loop when their daughter gets an abortion from which she could die or
become sterile. The author refers to parents as “unnecessary people”
further proving that those on the pro-choice side are working hard to create a rift between teenagers and their parents.
From herbal abortions to obtaining a judicial bypass, this zine offers tons of help in ending the life of an unborn child.

No Help for Abuse
The author, De Las Ondas, begins by sharing her story, which involved an abusive boyfriend and a clinic worker who helped her keep the news of her teenage pregnancy
and abortion from her parents. Readers should notice the clinic didn’t
offer help on abusive relationships or protected sex or abstinence,
especially since six months later, De Las Ondas was pregnant again. And
she refers to the boyfriend as a perpetrator as he wouldn’t allow them
to use birth control and would beat her, she says, if she even asked to.
She went back for a second abortion and again, the clinic obviously
only cared about getting the cash for the abortion and not what happened
to an abused, pregnant 16-year-old.

Shoplift
De Las Ondas’ first bit of advice is to take a pregnancy test, going as far as to tell teens to “five finger” one from the store. Yes, shoplift.What Happens During an Abortion – Minus the Details

Maternal Mortality and Abortion Advocacy

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.

Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.

Ever since reducing maternal mortalitywas established as one of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), abortion advocacy groups
have been working hard to affix their own goals inextricably to the
global effort to reduce the incidence of death of mothers in childbirth.

As the MDGs near their expiration, some the most outspoken activists in favor of legalizing abortion worldwide have been raising notes of concern and
frustration. At Slate.com, Amanda Marcotte, accused American NGOs of
ignoring the topic of abortion entirely, partly due to laws limiting
their ability to use government funding
to promote abortion in foreign countries. She also cites Jill
Filipovic, who wrote for Al Jazeera America that “maternal mortality is
down, but the proportion of maternal death and injury caused by unsafe
abortion has not changed.”

This echoes comments made earlier this year at a conference in the
Philippines by former UNFPA head Dr. Nafis Sadik, who cited statistics
saying that maternal mortality has decreased by 40 percent, yet “deaths
due to unsafe abortion have not declined at all.”

As I wrote previously, it’s misleading to say abortion-related deaths have not declined at all.
The relative proportion of maternal mortality attributable to abortion
has remained fairly constant at about 13% over the same period of time
that maternal mortality has declined by 40%. In other words, deaths from
abortion have declined, at a rate proportionate to other maternal
causes of death – by about 40%.

Of course, maternal health statistics are notoriously changeable. In 2010, the World Health Organization
(WHO) was forced to revise their estimates after a rival source of
global health estimates published far lower numbers. I recently wrote
about how that 40 percent decrease in maternal death could owe more to a
strategically pessimistic “before” picture than to successful
interventions; other estimates put the decline closer to 22 percent.

Former UNFPA head Dr. Nafis Sadik

But what has gone largely unchallenged is the claim that abortion accounts for
approximately 13 percent of maternal deaths worldwide. Sadik and
Filipovic have used this as an argument that more attention should be
paid to “unsafe” abortion, by making it legal, for starters. But their
basis for making that argument recently took a hit when the WHO published new estimates of maternal mortality by cause.

The new numbers come
from a survey of multiple studies published between 2003 and 2012,
analyzing the causes of maternal deaths between 2003 and 2009. Published
in the Lancet, the WHO report attributes about 8 percent of maternal
deaths to abortion – that’s roughly 40 percent lower than the 13 percent
estimate they made in 2005, which by the
way falls squarely within the survey period. In fact, if you compare
the WHO’s 2003-2009 estimates to the 2005 estimates by cause category
(hemorrhage, sepsis, etc.), no other individual cause shows as sharp a
decrease as abortion.

In fact, the reported decline could be even higher if you take into account
the methodology behind the sorting into categories. In 2005, the WHO
had a separate category for “unsafe abortion,” which required that the
fatal abortion be “performed by people lacking the necessary skills or
in an environment lacking the minimal medical standards, or both.” In
contrast, the “abortion” category in the 2003-2009 survey dropped the
“unsafe” qualifier for induced abortion and also included deaths due to
ectopic pregnancy and spontaneous abortion (miscarriage).

If the new WHO
numbers are reliable, then not only have abortion-related deaths
decreased proportionally with other causes of maternal mortality,
they’ve actually outpaced other causes – the causes pertaining to
childbirth itself. It’s also worth noting that the pro-abortion groups
can’t easily claim credit for this – not after crafting so much rhetoric around the idea of having been left behind by the maternal health agenda.

Far too many women still die giving life,
yet there are signs of hope: Latin America in particular has seen some
significant reductions in maternal mortality in recent decades, largely
due to long-term strategies that aren’t directly related to maternal
health (and certainly aren’t due to legalizing abortion), like
improvements in transportation, communication, and health care
infrastructure. Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest
incidence of maternal mortality, will presumably follow a similar
pattern, and hopefully sooner rather than later.

When that happens, it will be a victory for those who have worked tirelessly to ensure that every pregnancy and birth
is survivable for both mother and child. But it could leave those whose
attitude toward maternity is more of a zero-sum proposition in need of a
new cause to co-opt – or force them to campaign on behalf of abortion
for its own sake.
It’s quite telling that they’ve worked so hard to avoid doing so thus far.Editor’s note. This appeared at turtlebayandbeyond.org

TIME magazine’s “Preemie Revolution” illustrates how these babies are surviving and thriving

By Dave AndruskoA front cover photo for the new TIME magazine unintentionally sends as strong a pro-life message as we could ever want: “Saving Preemies: Emalyn was Due in June, She arrived in March.”
Written by Jeffrey Kluger, the home base for the story is the Neonatal Intensive Care
Unit (NICU) of the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. He
writes a realistic but deeply optimistic profile of little David Joyce
that explains the how and why of what TIME calls “A Preemie Revolution:
Cutting-edge medicine and dedicated caregivers are helping the tiniest
babies survive—and thrive.”
At the risk of stating the abundantly obvious, the incongruity (to put it mildly) of aborting the same age baby that is tenderly, lovingly cared for by a “SWAT team”
of devote specialists is hard to ignore—or understand. Babies whose
lives everyone is desperately trying to save could have been—and
are—aborted. Bear in mind these little ones are sensitive to pain.
I found a way to read the article which is not online yet (the June 2
issue is not in stores as of this afternoon), and I want to share some
of the amazing information embedded in what a lengthy and powerful account. Here are four thoughts:

David Joyce was born at 29 weeks. At 13 days old, he weighed less than 3 lb. (1.4 kg)Elinor Carucci for TIME

#1 “Every decade since the 1960s, the age of viability has been reduced by a week,” Dr. Edward McCabe, medical director of the March of Dimes,
tells Kluger. Kluger writes, “In 1960 the survival rate for infants
under 1,500 g, or 3.3 lb., was 28%. In 2010 it was 78%, and a lot of
that improvement has occurred just since the 1980s.”

#2. Kluger writes objectively about the most difficult and challenging cases but adds (as he should), “Thanks to advances not available even a few years ago, the odds of surviving
and thriving are improving all the time. Lives that once might have
begun and ended in a NICU can now be lived long and well—and there are
many reasons that’s true.”

#3. There is an amazing graphic which shows many of the major problems these preemies face and what is being done now to improve survivability. To name just one,
the brain. “Blood vessels that are not yet fully developed may bleed
into fluid-filled areas of the brain.” What’s being done? “To reduce
swelling and relieve pressure, a tube in the
brain can drain excess fluid.” There are other brilliantly innovative
approaches to address the problem of immature lungs and bolstering the
baby’s immune system,

#4. Without going into detail, because of the adoption of common
protocols, it is less likely a baby will die just because of which
hospital they are a patient at. “Typical of the best of the new breed,”
Kluger writes, is the Level IV NICU at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin
which has “a 97.5% discharge rate for preemies in the 2.8-to-3.5 Ib.
range.”
Of course, some babies
are born so early that not even the most skilled hands can save them.
Kluger’s account of the care with which the hospital prepares parents
for the end tells us that their baby has been respected and that his or
her life, however brief, mattered.
Here is the encouraging conclusion. Kluger writes

“More and more, however, the life is saved, the baby does come home, and there are plenty of sunny days and starry night
ahead. In some way, the work of a NICU will always seem like an
exercise in disproportion—an army of people and a mountain of
infrastructure care for a pound of life.

“But it’s a disproportion that speaks very well of us. The babies, increasingly, are reaping the benefits.”

Yes, it speaks very well of us. Each baby matters. Each baby deserves
our greatest effort. And by so doing, we are collectively a more caring
and decent people.
We believe that every baby—born and unborn, “wanted” and “unwanted”—deserve what some would consider a disproportion amount of love and affection and, most of all, protection.
If we won’t do it for them, who will we do it for?

Maya Angelou’s pro-life journey

By Dave Andrusko

Maya Angelou and her only son, Guy

When the sad announcement was
made that 86-year-old Maya Angelou had died, I knew only the most
generally-known details of her life. For example, that Ms. Angelou was a
prolific author and
poet, actress and activist, best known either for her book, “I Know Why
the Caged Bird Sings” or perhaps the poem she read at the first
inauguration of President Bill Clinton, “On the Pulse of Morning.”

I did not know that she had penned a powerful essay for the October 8, 2001, issue of Family Circle Magazine titled, “The Decision That Changed My Life: Keeping My Baby.”
I am reproducing it below, and then I will offer what the late Paul Harvey might call the rest of the story.

When I was 16, a boy in high school evinced interest in me, so I had sex with
him — just once. And after I came out of that room, I thought, Is that
all there is to it? My goodness, I’ll never do that again! Then, when I
found out I was pregnant, I went to the boy and asked him for help, but
he said it wasn’t his baby and he didn’t want any part of it.

I was scared to pieces. Back then, if you had money, there were some girls who
got abortions, but I couldn’t deal with that idea. Oh, no. No. I knew
there was somebody inside me. So I decided to keep the baby.

My older brother, Bailey, my
confidant, told me not to tell my mother or she’d take me out of school.
So I hid it the whole time with big blouses! Finally, three weeks
before I was due, I left a note on my stepfather’s pillow telling him I
was pregnant. He told my mother, and when she came home, she calmly
asked me to run her bath.

I’ll never forget what she said: “Now
tell me this — do you love the boy?” I said no. “Does he love you?” I
said no. “Then there’s no point in ruining three lives. We are going to
have our baby!”

What a knockout she was as a mother
of teens. Very loving. Very accepting. Not one minute of recrimination.
And I never felt any shame.

I’m telling you that the best
decision I ever made was keeping that baby! Yes, absolutely. Guy was a
delight from the start — so good, so bright, and I can’t imagine my life without him.

At 17 I got a job as a cook and later as a nightclub waitress. I found a room with

cooking

privileges, because I was a woman with a baby and needed my own place.
My mother, who had a 14-room house, looked at me as if I was crazy! She
said, “Remember this: You can always come home.” She kept that door
open. And every time life kicked me in the belly, I would go home for a
few weeks.

I struggled, sure. We lived
hand-to-mouth, but it was really heart-to-hand. Guy had love and
laughter and a lot of good reading and poetry as a child. Having my son
brought out the
best in me and enlarged my life. Whatever he missed, he himself is a
great father today. He was once asked what it was like growing up in
Maya Angelou’s shadow, and he said, “I always thought I was in her
light.”

Years later, when I was married, I
wanted to have more children, but I couldn’t conceive. Isn’t it
wonderful that I had a child at 16? Praise God!”

This essay takes on even great poignancy if we know that over the course of her long life
Ms. Angelou endured enormous hardships. She accumulated countless
honors—she was nominated for a Tony Award in 1973, won three Grammys for
her albums, received an honorary National Book Award
for her contributions to the literary community in 2013, and a
Presidential Medal of Freedom –but there was a great deal of pain and
trials and tribulations as well.

The story is a long, long one but important. Angelou’s only grandson,
Colin, was kidnapped in 1981 by her ex-daughter in law after she lost
custody. It would take four years to find Colin and bring him back home. In the meanwhile, Guy’s physical condition deteriorated from bad to worse.
In 1962 Guy (then 17) had broken his neck in an automobile accident. The grandson had been missing for a year, according to Beverly Beyette, writing in 1986 for the Los Angeles
Times, ”when Guy Johnson’s 20-year-old neck injury began to plague him;
calcium deposits had attached to his spine and Johnson, tall and husky
and athletic, was starting to have serious coordination problems. Soon,
he was at Children’s Hospital in San Francisco, paralyzed from the neck
down.”

Guy, understandably, hit an emotional low.

Angelou remembers him telling her, “Mother, I refuse to live
a talking head. And though you’re my Momma and though I’m your only
child, and I know you love me, I have to ask you something no one should
ever ask a mother. If there’s no chance of recovery, I have to ask you
to pull the plug and let me go.”

Well, Angelou said, smiling as she
recalled the startled faces of the intensive-care nurses, “When I really
understood what he was asking me, I mean, I started screaming–’Total
recovery, that’s what I’ll accept, total! I see you walking, standing,
riding. Total!’ “

Things did not turn around quickly. “His spinal column was too fragile to even blow on and there was a blood clot sitting on it that had to be removed,” Beyette wrote.

Then

As Angelou told her story, her voice
again rose to a shout: “I said, ‘I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.
I’m going to somebody much higher than you, much higher. You did the
best you knew to do and I have no argument with you. But now I’ve gone
somewhere else.’ “

The surgeries were a success. One morning, Angelou said, the nurse awakened her and said, ” ‘Good news.’ We went in and
she pulled the sheets off Guy’s feet and there was one toe (wiggling).”
The joy of that moment, now relived, made Angelou once again slap her
hands together and laugh.

Now, the search for Colin would intensify.

I don’t think anything else needs to be added, or could be
added. A remarkable woman whose loyalty to her son and grandson—her
determination in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds is
incredible—is a lesson to us all.

The rush to dehumanize the unborn reaches new speeds and new depths

By Dave Andrusko

Sarah Silverman appearing on “Real Time With Bill Maher”

What is the French phrase–the more things change, the more they stay the same?
This aphorism has been running through my mind of late as militant pro-abortionists say (and do) things that are even more bizarre than they are ugly.

It’s like being caught in a time warp where the zanies who (figuratively and literally) roamed the streets in the 1960s and 1970s have paid us a return visit.

We’ve talked about some examples—but by no means all—of their recent behavior, including a woman videotaping her own abortion and beaming her child’s death to the world through YouTube, cutesy invite cards
to come have an abortion (presumably just after having ones nails
manicured), and a morally brain-dead movie that pokes fun at the death
of an unborn child.
(We’re supposed to think that when Jenny Slate tells her boyfriend what
she is about to do to their unborn child, rather than “I’m having your
baby,” it’s clever for her to say, “I’m having your abortion.”)

What I hadn’t written about is Sarah Silverman’s latest idiocy that
is so outrageous that even some of her colleagues had to sort of, kind
of distance themselves. Silverman, a “comic,” had appeared on “Real Time
With Bill Maher.” Referring to whom it is that pro-lifers are concerned about, Silverman insisted “It’s goo that they’re so worried about.“

Not even a clump of cells: the unborn are “goo.”

So a perfunctory, sort-of apology from Mary Elizabeth Williams, writing at Salon.com. Actually, on second thought,
it’s more like putting Silverman’s remarks “in context” so as to come
to the same conclusion the likes of Williams always arrive at.

Which starts with a faux concern about respecting the complexity of
it all: “Sometimes I think that I’d love to be able to just think of
what occurs inside of a pregnancy as plain old goo.” But she can’t. She
even has written that life starts at conception!
But that, of course, doesn’t get in the way of offing the kid, ever and always. Williams informs us

“[W]e face the stigmatizing notion
that if we yield to the idea that a fetus is a life, we’re baby killers.
But a fetus is not an autonomous human being. And a fetus should not
have equal – or maddeningly, infuriatingly — more rights than the woman
in whose body it grows.”

So, as do all abortion advocates, Williams concludes that if you don’t
kill the child, he or she has “more rights” than the mother. Indeed,
“When we prioritize the idea of a baby over the reality of a woman, women suffer, and women die,” she tells us. Talk about putting your thumb on the moral scales.

The point of all this is, of course, is to trot out as many difficult scenarios as possible to come to the only conclusion: there can never be any “second-guessing” a woman—any woman’s—“reasons” for having an abortion.
If she wants to abort, as did Emily Letts, so she can show solidarity
with her abortion clinic clients and “prove” how safe abortions are, who
is anyone to “second guess” her decision?

Let me conclude by doubling back to an observation Williams makes earlier:

“In the never-ending ideological
battle over abortion, the great burning question perpetually boils down
to whether what is growing in a woman’s body is a human life or not, and how much if any protection it is entitled to.”

She’s conceded that life starts at conception, but to acknowledge “any protection” to any child in any set of circumstances is to elevate the child’s rights over the mother’s.
And why should Williams? The unborn child is not “an autonomous human being.” Of course neither is the newborn, the toddler,
the elderly sick, or any of us who suffer grossly debilitating
injuries. Which is why having no respect for the unborn always opens the
door to having no respect for other powerless groups of people.

So what do we have? A few words about how tacky it is to call the
unborn “goo,” but abortion on demand or any reason or no reason,
throughout pregnancy.
No matter what temporary detour pro-abortionists take, they always
end up at the same destination: lethally inflicting their will on those
unable to defend themselves.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Belgian Doctors Kill 5 per Day

By Wesley J. SmithBelgium has jumped head first into the darkness that is the culture of death. Euthanasia deaths–the ones recorded, more are done sub rosa–have gone up 27% in one year. From the story:

The numbers of euthanasia in Belgium have beaten another record in 2013 with 1,816 cases against 1,432 in 2012, an increase of 26.8%, according to the latest figures released by the newspapers Sudpresse group.

“You could say that currently there euthanasia 150 per month in Belgium or, even more telling, euthanasia 5 per day,” the newspaper said.”

Realize, that these killings include elderly couples, a despairing transsexual, and psychiatric patients.
Meanwhile, back in 2010, a

study

by the Canadian Medical Association found that 32% of euthanasia
killings in the Flemish areas were done imposed without request or
consent.
Oh, and here’s another tidbit: About 25% of patients dehydrated to death in Belgium are so killed without consent.

Culture of death, Wesley? What culture of death?Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s great blog.

8 scary statements said by abortion activists

By Kristi Burton BrownEvery so often – if we’re listening – we can catch glimpses of what abortion activists really think.
Have you ever wondered what Planned Parenthood’s real agenda
is? Have you ever considered the real goals behind abortion? Have you
ever thought about what abortion really is, according to the people who
do it every today?
Wonder no longer. Instead, consider – really ponder – these eight scary statements said by abortion activists. The people who said these things aren’t random humans pulled from an aisle in a grocery store;
they’re people who are deeply involved with abortion. They know the
truth; they know the facts; they know how tragic and cruel abortion is
to real, living human beings.
So listen up.

1) “I don’t know that [when life begins] is really relevant to the, relevant to the conversation.” ~ Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood
How can it not be relevant? Whether abortion is right or wrong is entirely wrapped up in when life begins. The entire reason pro-lifers
work to end abortion is because it cruelly – and often painfully– kills
an innocent human being whose life has begun. If that weren’t the case,
there would be no such thing as “pro-lifers.” Planned Parenthood
attempts to evade the central question because they know the
scientifically accurate answer (life begins at fertilization) makes
abortion wrong, inhuman, and unthinkable.

2) “I’m pro-choice because I understand that a zygote is not a baby.” ~ retweeted by NARAL
Just like an adolescent isn’t a child and a senior citizen
isn’t an adult, right? The stage of development a human being is in
should never affect her status as a human being. At every developmental
stage, our humanity is intact and should be fully respected.
3) “[A]bortion…is an essential measure to prevent the heartbreak of infant mortality…” ~ Terry O’Neill, President of NOW

Next, are we going to argue that school shootings are an essential measure to prevent the heartbreak of teen drunk driving? Seriously, O’Neill’s argument makes the same amount of sense as that outrageously wrong argument. Shooting a high school student
to prevent his future death is insane and heartless. And ripping a baby
apart limb from limb to prevent her from dying after birth is equally
insane.

4) “The toughest part of a D&E abortion is extracting the baby’s head. The head of a baby that age
is about the size of a plum and is now free-floating inside the uterine
cavity. You can be pretty sure you have hold of it if the Sopher clamp
is spread about as far as your fingers will allow. You will know you
have it right when you crush down on the clamp and see a pure white
gelatinous material issue from the cervix. That was the baby’s brains.
You can then extract the skull pieces. If you have a really bad day like I often did, a little face may come out and stare back at you.” ~ Dr. Anthony Levatino, M.D. (performed abortions for eight years, now a strong pro-lifer)
5) “Growing up, Mom always told me, ‘The answer to life is yes.’” ~ Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood

This statement isn’t scary at all; actually, it’s completely awesome.
The scary thing is that, despite this statement, Cecile Richards works
for the exact opposite. Abortion is a resounding, horrific “no” to life –
“no” that can never be taken back.
6) “In the state of
Colorado [people] acquire those [basic] legal rights when they are
living and breathing and walking around like you and I are.” ~ Fofi Mendez

If walking around is a requirement for basic legal rights – like the right to life
– a whole lot of us are in trouble. This standard excludes paraplegics,
quadriplegics, many veterans, victims of car wrecks, and plenty of our
senior citizens. Oh yeah, infants, too.
7) “I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don’t know that abortion is killing.” ~ Faye Wattleton, longtime President of Planned Parenthood
8) “That’s what religious liberty
is about. It’s about you getting to choose what would be right for you
in that circumstance, but I don’t get to tell you what to do and you
don’t get to tell me what to do.” ~ Ilyse Hogue, President of NARAL

Well, apply that standard to anything other than abortion, and we’d have a

complete

mess on our hands. Not to mention an entirely inhumane, uncivilized,
and incredibly violent society. Reread Hogue’s statement, but this time,
instead of thinking about abortion, think about rape. Robbery. Child
molestation. Torture. Murder.
Pretty scary, huh?Editor’s note. This appeared at liveactionnews.org.

Doctor and woman who suffered abortion complications testify on behalf of requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges

By Dave Andrusko

U.S. District Judge William M. Conley

Yesterday we posted an update about the two trialsthat are taking place simultaneously, challenging the laws in Wisconsin and Alabama that require abortionists to have admittingprivileges in local hospitals.

Earlier today a woman who suffered complications after her abortion testified on behalf of the state in the
lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s 2013 law, as did a doctor who said
requiring admitting privileges would make abortionists more accountable.
Lena Wood testified that she “started to became ill a day and a half after getting an abortion
in 1995 at Planned Parenthood’s Appleton clinic,” according to Patrick
Marley of the Journal Sentinel. Wood described her experience as “very
traumatic,” adding, “I wasn’t given any care or concern,” and “They kind
of ushered me out the back door.” Ms. Wood said she was hospitalized
for 12 days a week after her abortion.

Marley also wrote about the testimony of James Linn

“an obstetrician and gynecologist
at Columbia St. Mary’s, testified that he was called in to assist with
an emergency operation about 10 years ago for a woman who was brought to
his hospital from Affiliated.

“He said he did not believe the doctor
who provided the abortion appropriately followed up with the patient
and thought that doctor should have been referred to the state Medical
Examining Board for ‘basically abandoning a patient.’

“’The doctor never really called to check on the patient, which I found appalling,’ he testified.”

On Tuesday the plaintiffs were first to testify [http://nrlc.cc/1mrgeeO]. As NRL News Today explained, the lawsuit was brought by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and Affiliated Medical Services (AMS). They brought their lawsuit the same day Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed the bill into law.

After U.S. Judge Michael Conley issued his July 2013 preliminary injunction blocking the law from taking effect, the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the injunction. In December, a three-judge panel refused.
Planned Parenthood had to forego its original argument that the requirement to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the abortion clinic was an “undue burden” since it had subsequently obtained admitting privileges for its Appleton clinic.

Dr. Kathy King, Planned
Parenthood of Wisconsin’s medical director, switched course, arguing
that because AMS had not obtained these privileges, women would turn to
PP and overwhelm their clinics in Milwaukee, Madison and Appleton.

According to the Associated Press, “State attorneys maintain the law promotes a more thorough evaluation of abortion providers’ competency and ensures continuity of care
if a woman develops complications that force her to visit a hospital.”
In addition, AP’s Todd Richmond wrote, “They also argue there’s no
longer a need for the Appleton clinic to close and AMS’ providers
haven’t tried hard enough to get admitting privileges.”

The Wisconsin trial is expected to conclude by the end of the week. The Alabama case, which is being heard by U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, is expected to extend into June.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Heartbreaking must read story: “I didn’t want an abortion”

We hear a lot about choice and how every woman should be able to choose for herself if and when she has a child. But the truth is, many women are denied the choice to let their child live.
Whether it’s because of family, friends, boyfriends, or societal
pressures, so many women are made to feel that their only choice is
abortion. And they spend the rest of their lives suffering because of
it.
Paula Veit Fetter sent a letter to the women at Chicks on the Right asking them to share her story. She wants the world to see what abortion is really like to a seventeen year old girl who has no one to turn to for
help. Paula wants to you to open your eyes and realize that even those
who say they will help, don’t. And that when you need them the most,
sometimes your own family betrays you.

Paula was raised in a seemingly average family.
But inside their home, her mother was depressed and distant, and her
father, often a caring, charming and fun man, would turn on Paula,
beating her for the smallest of reasons. These circumstances created a
rebellious, promiscuous teenager and at the age of 16, Paula found out
she was pregnant. She and her boyfriend decided they would get married
and have their baby, but it was 1976 and abortion was now legal. When
her father discovered that Paula was pregnant, he beat her up and
insisted she have an abortion, driving her to an abortion clinic.
She was examined by the
doctor and told him that she didn’t want an abortion. But instead of
finding a way to help her, he told her that because she was 16, abortion
was her only choice. Paula didn’t give up, reaching out the
social worker at the clinic, telling her about the abuse and that she
was afraid to go home. She revealed her bruises, but the social worker
left the room to speak to Paula’s father. When she returned to the room,
Paula’s father was with her. The social worker told Paula that her
father promised not to hurt her again. She told her to go home with him
and she would find help for Paula. That help never came.

From the moment Paula got back into the car with her father he began beating her. He didn’t stop for two days. She writes:

At home, he dragged me upstairs by my hair, threw me against a wall
and said if I didn’t get an abortion, he would give me one himself,
then hit me in the stomach. He started choking me and I felt myself
passing out. At that point, my mother, who had just been watching while
all this happened, told him he had to stop choking me or I would die, He
stopped choking me but continue to hit and kick me.

A few days later, while her father was working, Paula asked her
boyfriend to take her to the agency who was supposed to help her. She
told them what was happening and showed them her bruises. They advised
her to abort and told her there were no resources to help her. Paula
refused to abort her baby and was sent to a group home.
Once there she was sent to a local doctor who also dismissed her desire
to have her baby and told her to terminate. Terrified that her father
would find her and kill her, and let down by every other adult she
turned to, Paula only had her boyfriend for support. But then she lost
him too. She says:

My boyfriend and I continued to see each other during this time and still talked of marriage. After I had been in the
group home about three months, my boyfriend and a friend of his stole a
car and were arrested. My case worker contacted me and told me my
boyfriend told his lawyer he did not want to get married. I was hopeless
at that point, and that night I took all my morning sickness pills
in an effort to kill myself. This was not a cry for help, it was a real
attempt-I thought the pills would kill me and I did not expect to wake
up. I threw up all night and survived the attempt. The next day I called
my case worker and told her I was ready to have an abortion, I didn’t
feel like I had any other options.

Two weeks after her birthday and four and a half months pregnant, Paula had a saline abortion in which a saline solution is used to burn the unborn baby both inside and out. Paula delivered a dead, burnt baby. And the
she carried the pain and guilt of that for years. Once she became
Christian and felt God’s forgiveness, she was able to forgive herself.
But today, married with
two grown children and a granddaughter, Paula wonders how many young
girls and woman are suffering because of an abortion they never wanted.
She wonders how many of them were abandoned by their families and
friends. She wonders how many

social workers

who promise to help, never come through. Paula fears that so many girls
are being told that abortion is their only choice and that those girl
then have to live in pain and guilt. She doesn’t want anyone else to
ever go through what she did.
Her request to you is that you understand that some girls don’t get to choose. It doesn’t matter what the law
or the media says. Forced abortion happens right here, right now in the
United States. Girls need real help and real solutions. Don’t turn a
blind eye, help them.